New York Times Explains
Winter Soldier BlackoutPublic editor responds
to concerns raised by FAIR
4/8/08

New York Times
public editor Clark Hoyt has offered a response to media
activists who wrote to the paper about its non-coverage of last
month's Winter Soldier hearings. Hoyt's explanation is that
reporters at the Times
had "not been aware of the group or its meeting," but likely
wouldn't have covered it if they had been aware of the event.

The idea that the Times
was unaware of Winter Soldier is remarkable; the paper's D.C.
reporters were repeatedly sent press releases about the events,
the same ones that other media outlets received that did manage
to cover the event, ranging from Pacifica Radio's
Democracy Now!
to the New York Times'
corporate sibling the Boston Globe.

Hoyt's letter in full:

***

Dear Reader,

Thank you for writing about the Winter Soldier
event in Maryland last month and its lack of coverage by the
Times.

My assistant checked with various editors at
the
Times
to see if there was any discussion about covering the Winter
Soldier meeting. The editor in the Washington bureau who
oversees national security coverage said he had not been aware
of the group or its meeting. The
Times
normally has three Pentagon reporters. The meeting fell within
their area of coverage, and one of them probably would have been
assigned had editors chosen to staff the event. But one is on
book leave, one was traveling with the secretary of defense, and
one was in Iraq covering the war. The
Times
also did not cover an announcement the following day by Vets for
Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13
times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group
which organized Winter Soldier.

One group was emphasizing what it charged were
war crimes, war profiteering and war mismanagement. The other
group was protesting what it charged was the failure of the
media to report more fully on signs of progress in Iraq, such as
rebuilt schools and infrastructure.

News organizations like
the Times,
with its own substantial investment in independent reporting
from Iraq tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war,
rather than relying on charges and counter-charges at home by
organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about the
war.

Sincerely,

Clark Hoyt

****

The Times'
D.C. bureau editor's claim to have not heard of the hearings is
remarkable, given that the AP newswire
carried a story on the hearings, and IVAW has confirmed to FAIR
that the D.C. bureau had been sent three separate rounds of
different IVAW press releases. In addition, at least 150 Times
staffers were sent press releases about Winter Soldier by the
Institute for Public Accuracy, a group that encourages inclusion
of overlooked facts and progressive perspectives in media
coverage. Given that media organizations operating on a small
fraction of the Times'
budget were aware of and able to find the resources to cover
these hearings, the Times'
D.C. bureau's plea to ignorance about the hearings is all the
more disappointing.

Meanwhile, Hoyt's
justification of the Times
failure to cover Winter Soldier on the grounds that they also
did not cover "an announcement the following day by Vets for
Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13
times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group
which organized Winter Soldier," draws a far-fetched parallel
between a group presenting eyewitness testimony about atrocities
in Iraq and a group releasing a press release about media bias.
(As a group that often puts out press releases about media bias
that don't get cove red by the Times,
the comparison strikes us as rather absurd.) Further, the size of IVAW and
Vets for Freedom are not directly comparable,
as IVAW is a group of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,
whereas anyone can sign up on the Vets for Freedom website,
which stipulates that "non-veterans can also be members of Vets
for Freedom."

Hoyt's claim that "news
organizations like the
Times, with
its own substantial investment in independent reporting from
Iraq, tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war" is
akin to asserting that reporters on the police beat prefer to
write about crimes they have seen themselves rather than talking
to eyewitnesses. Given that Times
reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great
difficulty travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard
to imagine that they could provide a full and accurate picture
of the war without interviewing people who have participated in
it. And of course the paper does often interview U.S. military
personnel about what they've seen, though when they are
whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as
"the human consequences of failed policy," the Times
suddenly has much less interest in what they have to say.

The New York Times'
decision to assign one of its two available correspondents to
tour with the Secretary of Defense instead of hearing the
first-hand accounts of the Winter Soldiers demonstrates a very
strange notion of "independent reporting."

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to
everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate
documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies
of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to
fair@fair.org.